Honors Program & College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle. Julie Villegas & Manka Varghese, in collaboration with Humboldt and Jena Universities, Germany. Summer A term.

Monday, July 13, 2015

July 10

Today is the first day of our free long weekend after a week of preparation for yesterday's presentation. Many of us chose to leave Berlin and explore more of other places in Europe. I was fortunately to have the chance to see Rome and Florence in Italy. The weather was extremely hot and much more tourists than in Berlin as well. We visited Colosseum, Imperial Forum, Pantheon, and Trevi Fountain.

Early in the morning, departure!

First stop: Colosseum! It was impressive and amazing, and also many tourists as well. Colosseum is well preserved while we can also see many evidence of damages from those war years.

Imperial Forum

Pantheon

Street artist imitation of Het meisje met de parel

Authentic Italian food in Eataly

Trevi Fountain under construction

Famous ice cream store: Giolitti.

July 11

We visited Vatican City in the morning.
Although I have heard so many things about this religious country, it was still
amazing and exciting to explore it by myself. Once we got to St. Peter Square,
I almost wanted to leave when I saw that many tourists waiting in the line
trying to get into Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano. We decided to hire
a didactic guide so that we can skip the line.We visited St. Peter
Basilica(Basilica di San
Pietro in Vaticano), Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. In the afternoon, we
went to Castel Sant'Angelo to have a great view of the whole city. It was
hot and long stairs to climb up, but the view was definitely worth it.

Something interesting is that we
missed the train two times. We had these stereotypes of Italian people not
always on time; however, our trains were precisely on time or departed even one
minute early.